I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

The fourth nerf

The first dev blog associated with the summer expansion has been out for a few days and as is my custom, I'd like to talk about this dev blog and what I think of the feature. That dev blog is about the future of reprocessing.

I love almost everything about this dev blog. Almost.

I've been bitching about mineral compression going back almost to the beginning of this blog. I'm quite sad that it's taken three years to fix this problem but I'm quite pleased to see it's finally going to become a relic of EVE's former era. Now this change isn't 100% positive. I recognize that this change hurts EVE's solo capital producers, who have come to rely on a single jump freighter full of large rail guns to feed their industrial empire. But the addition of viable mineral compression should go a goodly way to addressing their woes. In addition, when the potential of this change was brought up at a CSM Summit, I pointed out that module reprocessing at one time was a decent portion of the income of beginning EVE players. That's going to be hurt as well. Matter of fact, between this and the ubiquity of salvage thanks to data and relic sites, it's going to make most L4 mission looting no longer worthwhile. That's a pity.

Mineral sources as a thing deserves a closer look:

This is an old graph and I've lost track of who originally produced it. But it shows -- about three nerf generations ago now -- where the minerals that were used at that time came from. As you can see, only about 20-30% of most minerals came from mining (the gold numbers). And for every mineral except morphite, the majority of minerals came from either loot reprocessing or drone compounds. Since then, as I mentioned, there have been three major nerfs:

Drone compounds are now also a relic of a former era;

loot drops in missions were greatly nerfed; and,

then they were nerfed again by eliminating virtually all T1 loot drops from missions.

So call this the fourth and probably final nerf of this cycle. We don't know what percentage of EVE's minerals comes from mining today. CCP guards that data jealously. But we know one thing for sure: it's going to be the large majority of minerals from now on. So this change is rather an epic buff to mining's importance.

What remains to be seen is whether it will be an epic buff to mining. It's famously one of the most preyed-upon, least interesting portions of EVE Online game play. Even its adherents can think of no greater praise for it than "it's soothing." But it's about to be where all of us get all our ships and modules from, with nearly no exceptions. Will more players partake? Or will this be an effective buff to mining bots? We'll see. Hopefully the Security team will be on their toes once this is implemented.

One last thing: I think the new mineral compression mechanics are a great idea but I do consider it somewhat unlikely that the Rorqual is going to benefit much at all thanks to the POS compression module. When choosing between flying around a large ungainly ship to do compression -- which takes special skills, lots of ISK, and involves... you know... risk -- I suspect most players are simply going to use the POS module. That, anyone can use without special skills or undue risk. It also has the benefit of being awake no matter what time you're mining. So the Rorq is going to have to rely on its other use cases and to their credit, the devs recognize it:

Also, we do know the Rorqual needs more love to be a more viable ship, and that is being looked into, but chances are this won’t make it in EVE’s summer expansion.

So call me a "hold" on Rorqs for now.

And that's all for now! Big changes afoot, and we're going to have to wait a while to see how they shake out. But overall, I'm optimistic about this one, particularly for you null-sec miners out there.

And mission looters and anom looters, predominantly who live in high sec, and newer players, and also low skilled miners, are seriously getting fucked over. Yet you are OK with wrecking the NPE further for a LARGE segment of new players.

You are either as evil as mynnna and erotica, or really really dumb.Why on earth do you revel in wrecking game play for so many?

If looting isn't worth anymore than the older players will stop doing it. So the price for meta 2-4 Items will be rising aka more money for new chars who are doing the new looting because it is easy.Old players in HighSec doing PVE have the skillpoints and money to blitz the missions. Which also means less problems with ninjalooter an Missionganker.

Mining got a buff

So, where is your problem`?

I still don't know if you are stupid or a troll. I really hope for a troll.

I think you fail to understand how the market works Dinsdale. And you fail pretty hard.

If the amount of isk giving item drops decreases, then the value of those isk giving items increases.

If the amount of isk giving items decrease in one area and then increase in another area with higher risk, the likelyhood of people farming those items as a career getting killed goes up and this also increases the unit value.

Seriously, all of your doom and gloom posts about highsec nerf after highsec nerf, and with the exception of the absolutely broken early incursion stuff, I'm making more in highsec now than I ever did before.

The economy will balance itself out as it always does. If you were smart you'd be speculating in the areas where the "nerf" will hit because you can get volume right now.

You also continue to claim "large segment of the subscriber base" being impacted by this - and you may be right, but only in the sense that nulsec pilots have highsec alts.

tl;dr: the sun will shine tomorrow, this doesn't "wreck" anything by any objective measure, and being able to fix the loot tables allows CCP to balance areas which desperately need balance.

@ anonymus & Braverthananyoneelse. The market mechanism you describe work's only for item's who possess a value for themselve's (aka meta4 modules and some meta3)It doesn't work for modules who's worth is deteremined by mineral refining (the items nobody want's to use/fit)

To put it in other words ......the value of misson loot comes from valueable item's, nonvaluable refine items and salavage loot. The value of the second category will decrease after the refining update. unless the value of minerals rise by 30%. Why 30% ? Because 30%, is roughly the difference in scrap metall processing waste before and after patch

To be honest, I think highsec miner ganking is way too easy, and way too common. I suspect barge EHP needs another round of buffing, and perhaps their drone capability a minor nerf to ensure balance remains when miners are caught by non-ganking enemies.

But then, I think ganking as it exists is a frankly asinine bit of 'emergent gameplay' that exists as much for the sake of grief as gain.

Ganking in HighSec is just easy because players are fitting their ship to be efficient in doing Missions (pimping, no omnitank, no web, capstable etc). If they would fit more for PvP than they ISH/Hour would be reduced, but you would be more Gankresistent xD

No one fits for PVP in PVE because it doesn't work. It's never worked. We used to have better conversations about why it doesn't work than, "People are lazy and fit for ISK/H". We used to talk about things like the incoming DPS from the bonus room in Angel/Gurista Extravaganza, how you had to fit max tank to specific damage types, and how things like that were a hindrance to teaching people PVP setups because the theory is completely in reverse for the two playstyles.

But hey! If you wanna break it down to a philosophical sounding blurb instead of actually discussing game mechanics that cause people to do it... Good for you!

Halycon: if the damage in Extravaganza is too high, do what those of us in wormholes do to mitigate damage - run in a gang. Wormhole siting crews are usually PvP fit (except in cases where they are running them at home) .

Missions don't have to be soloable. If you are solo and fitting for specific damage with a pure PVE fit you deserve what comes your way. Find some friends, fit for PvP and take logistics.... It's actually more fun anyway.

But then you run straight into the problem that WH people complain about Null in regards to play styles. WH != Null. WH's PVE is supposed to be, at least originally, group content. Level 1,2,3 and 4 missions are supposed to be solo content, with Level 5 being group. With the payouts, time to complete, and rewards being setup that way. Mechanics CCP has re-enforced over the years.

You're say, "Do what we do in WHs". But WH's are not Highsec anymore than it's Null. The problem isn't people being too stupid to do something, its that mechanics for each area of Eve are setup to reward specific types of play. Comparing strategies deployed in each to prosper cannot be directly done from one to the other without also taking into account the underlying mechanics that cause certain behaviour.

People don't do things because they don't work, people do things because they do work.

Ideally, and what people have wanted for longer than I've been playing, which is something like 8 years now with CCP outright saying they won't do it.. is to move highsec away from the tanking a crap ton of NPC tuned damage type model in missions, and moving it toward fewer NPCs tailored to reward PVP fits on ships. Incursions "kinda" was a step in that direction, then CCP did jack all with it afterwards. Same with a couple of the Epic Arc missions.

As a hisec miner myself, I'd have to disagree. Most of the ganks I see (the gankers have a tendency to link their KMs in local), the victims have absolutely no tank at all - empty midslots and empty rigs, nothing fitted but miners and upgrades. That, more than anything else, seems to be what makes miner ganking so easy.

You can fit out a solo retriever to survive a single Catalyst and still keep two MLUs in the lowslots, or you can fit out a Mackinaw to do the same with all 3 lows devoted to MLUs. If that's not safe enough then the Procurer and Skiff are right there for you, and of course can devote all their lowslots to MLUs with tank in mids/rigs. As a general rule, even if gankers can bring enough firepower to bear to overwhelm a mining ship's tank, they won't do it when they can just as easily split their efforts and get more kills on the guys in the next belt who are completely untanked.

The only issue I have with hisec ganking is that it's too difficult for players to interfere with the gankers' gameplay (or, if you prefer, it's too easy for gankers to make themselves immune to player interference). Career gankers use alts to do the majority of the in-space work, picking targets and arranging a warpin, and only undock the gank alt to warp straight from the docking ring to a safe undock bookmark, and then from there right to their target where they commence ganking. The scout alt is protected by CONCORD, as generally would-be protectors are not dedicated alts who can casually ignore killrights against them and the ganker does everything they can to avoid interacting with other players aside from shooting their one target.

This leads to situations where a large portion of a hisec system is riled up against a ganker and white knights and recent victims take up combat ships to try and stop them, but are rendered powerless because there's no way to stop a ganker reaching their target. Players can protect any given mining operation, but that just results in gankers avoiding that belt in favour of one that isn't protected; even following a scout doesn't necessarily work as the scout can arrange a target and then continue scouting to lead pursuers away.

Defending any given miner/mining operation works as a deterrent to gankers, though gameplay-wise it's pretty terrible, but IMO there should also be room for players who wish to take the fight to the gankers, rather than just defend against them - victims who want revenge and white knights who want to stop ganking on general principle. Right now that simply isn't practical, because even with -10 security status and dozens of available kill rights it's simply too easy for a ganker to avoid other players.

Personally I'd like to see some sort of gameplay change that made life more difficult for players -5.0 security and below in hisec, ideally something driven by players rather than NPCs. I'd much rather have something like a hisec deployable bubble that only affected people with criminal flags and/or -5.0 and lower security which could be used to trap and ambush them than have CONCORD or station turrets simply blap them whenever they undock.

You don't need a pimp PVE ship to run any of the high end missions, it just takes longer,

This isn't about pimping. Not once have I said anything about pimping. It's about a systemic problem with how missions are setup to reward players, start to finish.

From level 1 missions when you start your Eve career, Eve trains mission runners to fit for them a specific way. Max tuned, not omni, tanks and minimal gank. And that follows all the way up the progression curve, ship to ship, module to module. It's the way missions are setup. Doesn't matter if you're running Damsel at level 2 or at level 4, the basic fitting idea to how your ship should be setup is the exact same. It's a PVE fit. Which is at odds with a PVP fit.

And CCP set it up that way. Certain modules that are the bread and butter of PVE don't even have a use in PVP, and visa versa. And that's fine. That's the game.

I have no problem with people in PVE fits getting ganked, I just don't. That's the risk you run, it's the risk I ran years ago when I still did missions. What I have a problem with is people saying, "You're doing it wrong!", when they very much aren't doing it wrong because if they did it the way they are being told by the PVP crowd they couldn't run the content at all solo.

And yet again, IT'S SOLO CONTENT. CCP has balanced Level 4 missions over the years to solo content. CCP has added ships(marauders) to facilitate doing Level 4 missions faster solo. Not group. Solo. Most mission runners go about their business and are left alone. They are not ganked 99% of the time. They make isk and log out happy. It's the 1% of the time people come in, shoot them, and say they are doing it wrong when 99% of the time they are doing it exact right that I've got a problem with.

It's utterly absurd.

People fit the way they fit for missions because it works. They do not fit the way PVPers say they should fit because it doesn't work. If you want missioners to fit the way PVPers fit, then lobby to change the missioning progression and setup to require a more PVP centric fit. Do not say they should do it such and such way when the game isn't setup that way, or because that's the way you do it in WH space. Because as I said earlier, WH is not highsec.

Do you know that often career gankers are outlaws, and thus have to keep moving in highsec to keep from being blapped by NPC faction police that chase them?

Then you have ways for the miner to defend themselves even before the gank commences, it's called situational awareness, and of course you have D-Scan, if there are a lot of combat ships appearing on it, it's time to skedaddle.

Plus you can mine aligned to a celestial, then when it's time to go just press warp. And then you can also make it not worth the ganker's effort by making your barge tanked, like I said above with the right fitting a barge can have a tank the size of a battleship.

All that really happens is you lose a little yield, but isn't that an okay price to pay for safety. The key to being safe from ganking is preparing beforehand, not when the gank is incoming.

I'm sorry but I see losing ships to gankers as standart fees for missioning in HighSec. Like loosing Frigates when plexing in WF.

If people are told to fit a certain way than they should learn to think for themselves. If PvP fits (or reffiting for travel) are too much of a hassle for LvL4 Missions othan you should accept that you are loosing sometimes your BS.

That's Eve. At least for me. If I want to carebear without worring about pirates and gankers there are still other games out there. Ok not really if you want something with spaceships -.-

On the one hand, it's ridiculous the degree to which you are encouraged to fit a carefully tuned tank. (However, devil's advocate notes that if you're expecting to fight Tengus in PVP you sometimes put an extra kinetic hardener on.) On the other hand, some people seem to fly ridiculously expensive ships in the name of efficiency while taking longer to pay it off as a result. Several of the ALODs in The Mittani have been presented as object lessons in bad ROI. On the gripping hand, T2-only battleships rarely get suicide ganked because it's not worth it, yet they complete missions just fine, if slightly slower than the deadspace-fit ones. So, it's the professional mission-runners who have spent the longest time having bad habits reinforced who end up getting ganked. For at least some of them, they feel like they have nothing better to do than to get bigger numbers to grind faster for bigger numbers, because, well, "Isn't that what you do in every MMO?"

Basically, what I'm saying here is that getting suicide-ganked is *not* a standard risk for a mission runner. It's a risk for a particular kind of mission runner who gets surprised by it because nobody believes that EVE is how it is until they experience it themselves (or, at the least, experience it by proxy because they read things like this blog).

I'm not a ganker. My Maelstrom even blapped a NinjaSalvager once AND survived it xD

But from what I see (my Corpmates lost 3 BS in 2days for a total worth of 2,5 Billion ISK) is that Missioner are getting ganked because they don't inform themselve. Because they think excessive Pimp fitting is worth it.

I think you've missed my point completely. Yes, there are many options for miners to defend themselves against gankers - tanky ships, situational awareness, mining aligned, bringing bodyguards, etc. What there is not is an effective way for miners to go from defence to attacking gankers, which is what I'd like to see added.

I'm well aware that most gankers are outlaws, or quickly become them, which is a significant part of why they pass on most of the work that actually requires being in space to a neutral alt, usually in an NPC corp to avoid rousing suspicion. The outlaw character only pops up to warp to a safespot and then straight on to the target, never sitting still long enough for faction police OR players who want to stop them to actually do anything. In effect, the "penalty" of outlaw status is overcome completely. I'd like to give players the tools to change that, so that being an outlaw opens you up to a whole new set of problems. Suddenly ruining your security status at the same time you're pissing off many other inhabitants of your system actually poses a threat to the gankers' playstyle. At least, that's what I'd like to see.

Yeah halycon cuz we all.know to solo a mish in high sec u need a 40bil isk ship.....oh u dont that just the max isk per hour......yeah I dont understand why u would have to risk something in eve for max efficiency......ffs

Have you thought of the possibility that the scouts are actually players themselves?

Also as an outlaw anyone can shoot you no matter where you go, it seems that is not an opportunity taken very often in highsec.

So to me it sounds like you want to make sure that the intended targets of a gank (which is in and of itself a surprise attack) are able to hold the ganker in place so that the miners or white knights can come in a combat ship to take a free shot? Am I getting it right now?

Bubbles aren't allowed in highsec for a reason, CONCORD/CCP doesn't allow it as there are already mechanics in place that limits the options for PVP in highsec.

I will ask you the same question I asked Evan, how much do you really know about ganking? How much knowledge do you have of how it works and what it takes to pull one off?

I'm telling you now, the best way to not be ganked is to not make it worth the effort to gank you, preventative measures.

The main difficulty with hunting gankers versus hunting miners is that miners are essentially a static target, while gankers are a fleeting target. The window for opportunity is the time between the ganker undocking and the time that they land at the target. If you're quick you can blap them while they're shooting, this requires a few sentry drones and a very fast locking drone bunny. It can be done, and I've been mining near fleets of twenty mackinaws which deploy a dozen sentry drones, with a sensor-boosted destroyer as the drone assist.

I'm not sure I understand the logic: on one hand, CPP makes it easier to loot (missions or anything else for that matter); on the other hand, it makes that loot worthless. Oh well, maybe putting CPP and logic into one sentence is not the best idea (with all 'due respect' added).

Dinsdale: do you have evidence that nullsec "cartel" leadership was told in advance about the MTU? and that their upset about the MTU directly resulted in CCP being petitioned to wreck mission running?

Anonymous @01:16: Mynnna is on the CSM. This means that the "null sec cartel" has a finger in the design and development pie. One of the better Goon number-crunchers is right here in the developers' ears telling them, "this doesn't look nice for null sec." No conspiracy theory required.

Dinsdale: the null sec CSM member would have been aware of the MTU while it was in development. Suffice it to say this reprocessing nerf is part of a larger package of work which the CSM would have been privy to for quite some time.

The plot is a little more complex than even you could believe. Why else do you think that indestructible outposts get the best reprocessing ability, while POSes are left out in the cold?

the announcement of the goons rental empire coincides with the release of the reprocessing nerf - thus mynnna has broken the NDA by warning the goons in advance. goon refuse to mine and regard industry with disdain. goons admit that they need a one-to-one ratio of miners to combat pilots to keep up their SRP. with the nerf to reprocessing - they needed a replacement source of minerals for their attrition warfare.

why do you think the rental agreement disallows CSAA by renters? because the goons need to source those minerals for themselves. here's what will happen - publord will change over to mineral based economy. renters will be ordered to supply minerals to specific destination stations. when that does, its the nail in the coffin for mynnna on the csm.

the sudden change of heart of the goons getting renters? oh really they just learnt from their spies that someone makes significant isk from renters? bullshit. this statement from the "best economists in the game". anybody who does not think the information was not available for years? or that the goon ecom-team could not do a decent estimation of a rivals costs and income?

so now what? there is botlord agreement with PL to "leave the renters alone". other alliances without a significant workforce to supply replacement ships/minerals will be unable to maintain SRP.

the nerf to minernal compression will come summer. plus there is a growing fotm to target any and all freighters as a step up from indie ship ganking. making jita a more difficult proposition to supply to any null power.

there you are dinsdale, finally you have evidence. much good it will do you.

Fuck looting. Nom really fuck looting, Even with only 8 million Skillpoints I didn't bothered anymore with looting.

When the Stratios came out, I got a Vagabond and 250mill in pimp fittings and blitzed the missions. 100million per hour , neary risk free without the lame warpspeed of Battleships ... and only half the cost of the of a Macharial.

If more players are stopping looting , the prices for Metagear will rise enough to sustain new players more.

And why was reprocessing Loot good for new players? I tried that... took too many skillpoints. Or did I just oversee something?

Braverthananyoneelse: new players can take advantage of salvaging contractors like Pro Synergy. They don't need the skills to salvage and reprocess junk on their own, they just get someone else to do that for them.

The reprocessing nerf will deleteriously impact Pro Synergy's efforts, for example. But on the other hand, by devaluing the task Pro Synergy might end up with more work (because fewer people will be willing to do it for themselves now that the profit is gone).

I'm conflicted about it. On the whole, the last two years since CCP has started down the path of playing with the building blocks of Eve's Industry(resource gathering), I can honestly say they've been good for the overall health of the game. But I really kinda mourn what they've been killing off in the process.

I miss Drone Regions being a place that played unlike any other area of Eve. I miss seeing Catalysts, and later Noctises(Noctii?), following missioners and stealing salvage from the field. And now I'm going to miss looting.

I wish CCP would do something about that now though. Those things made Eve interesting, and they've died in the name of making Eve's industry more stable. If we're hit the "Final Nerf", it's time to make the game vibrant again.

I would suggest that it's a nerf. To make decent money from mining you're going to need to refine and do it well. That takes quite an investment in skill points. Will botters make that investment? Given how easy it's going to be to trace the minerals from the bot to the refiner, that's going to be a big risk that I'm *guessing* the botters won't bother with. But then again, I don't know much about this stuff.

I should add that with the current system, a bot gets the skills for perfect refining along the way to getting tech 2 crystals. With the new system, for a high sec bot you're talking about additional time, in which hopefully the bot gets caught.

With the new system, however, manufacturers are going to want compressed ore, not compressed minerals. That means that the bots will skip the step of refining and send the ore straight to market. So what we could see is an increase in delivery bots moving product from a station to the market.

We won't really know the true effects (money buff or nerf), however, until we see how the market reacts after the changes go live.

If they want the Rorqual to be worthwhile again theres 1 option people haven't suggested yet.Let it refine ores while in industrial mode with a refine % between a LS pos and an nullsec outpost. If possible requiring the skills and the implant to get there but you get my drift

Well, sounds like this may be a way to start more PVP in highsec, with the new value POS compressing modules are going to get I bet some highsec mercenary corps could make a lot of isk getting contracts to bash the POSes that aren't being used.

Or highsec industrial corps could do the bashing themselves. Either way it means there could possibly be more places for PVP in highsec.

As initially designed the new POS modules compress instantly. You can put up a pos, put in one compression module, compress all the ore in the universe that your mouse hand can stand, then pull it all down before a war dec can hit you.

If the compression modules took time (like building railguns takes time) then you'd be right that there'd be a new industry that caused people to have assets in space. Potentially a lot of POS so they can run a lot of compression in parallel.

Maybe, but why go to all the trouble of putting it up when after a few seconds/minutes/hours you'll just be taking it down again?

And of course if you want to continue using the compression it would be best to keep the POS up as guns can be onlined too to defend your turf. Putting up a POS isn't something that's taken lightly as I've observed.

Perhaps they should make the rorqual a mobile POS. Active your industrial mode and you gain shields, ore compression and mining bonuses. Then instead of a reinforce timer, you can give it buffed resistances like the bastion.

For large mining fleets, you wont have to setup a POS and you'll have a good chance of getting out alive. However, this will come at the cost of potentially losing your rorq. All the attackers will have to do is wait out rorq's fuel bay (~1hours max) and then hit it when it loses its bonuses. Meanwhile, the miners would probably reship and try and save the capitol.

Looks like another snub to new players so veterans with all the assets and sp can have another easy income.

All vets need to do is maintain buy and sell orders while leveraging their sp/implants for an easy profit while new players get less isk for their work then ever before.

Nice work ccp... maybe the NPE should have a new section explaining to new players that whatever they do they should not refine since without weeks to months of skilling they are losing significant isk in doing so.

You mean that null alliances gets yet another major buff. Why don't you take a closer look at those B.S. before/after graphs, and then run the numbers for both high and null and compare them?

And, noobs are really taking it in the neck on this one. As if most noob miners fit those 4% reprocessing implants, have high standings with the NPC corps, and have all of those reprocessing skills trained up to level 5. Run the numbers on how this affects a 1-2 month old mining player, Jester.

And, while you are at it, check on the loss of income to a noob mission runner, who is running level 1 and 2 missions, and picks up a good percentage of income from recycled loot.

Man, you guys on the CSM are massive fail. You only are looking at how these changes affect null vets, and no one else.

And, so much for T1 modules. Put a stake in it - CCP has officially declared T1 modules to be utterly useless to fit and build.

Meta modules are already cheaper than T1 modules, and the prices of meta modules are solely determined by their reprocessing value (because the NPC drop rates are too high and glut the market). Lower the reprocessing efficiency, and the market value of the meta modules falls even lower - making it completely cost-ineffective to fit, and therefore manufacturer, almost all of the T1 modules.

Yet another clear case of CCP killing off the noob players. Is there anything that a noob industrialist can manufacturer and turn a profit?

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